but not so hard. I worked from
eight till three with little intermission, but only accomplished four
pages. Then I went out and made a visit or two, and looked in on Cadell.
If I get two pages in the evening I will be satisfied, for volume II.
may be concluded with the week, or run over to Sunday at most. Will it
tell, this work? I doubt it, but there is no standing still.

A certain Mr. Mackay from Ireland called on me, an active agent, it
would seem, about the reform of prisons. He exclaims, justly I have no
doubt, about the state of our Lock-up House. For myself, I have some
distrust of the fanaticism--even of philanthropy. A good part of it
arises in general from mere vanity and love of distinction, gilded over
to others and to themselves with some show of benevolent sentiment. The
philanthropy of Howard, mingled with his ill-usage of his son, seems to
have risen to a pitch of insanity. Yet without such extraordinary men,
who call attention to the subject by their own peculiarities, prisons
would have remained the same dungeons which they were forty or fifty
years ago. I do not see the propriety of making them dandy places of
detention. They should be a place of punishment, and that can hardly be
if men are lodged better, and fed better, than when they are at large.
The separation of ranks is an excellent distinction, and is nominally
provided for in all modern prisons. But the size of most of them is
inadequate to the great increase of crime, and so the pack is shuffled
together again for want of room to keep them separate. There are several
prisons constructed on excellent principles, the economy of which
becomes deranged so soon as the death takes place of some keen
philanthropist who had the business of a whole committee, which, having
lost him, remained like a carcass without a head. But I have never seen
a plan for keeping in order these resorts of guilt and misery, without
presupposing a superintendence of a kind which might perhaps be
exercised, could we turn out upon the watch a guard of angels. But,
alas! jailors and turnkeys are rather like angels of a different livery,
nor do I see how it is possible to render them otherwise.
Superintendence is all you can trust to, and superintendence, save in
some rare cases, is hard to come by, where it is to be vigilantly and
constantly exercised. _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ As to
reformation, I have no great belief in it, when the ordinary class of
culprits, w